Amtrak Injury Attorneys

Nationwide and intercity, Amtrak is the largest railroad passenger train carrier. The owner and operator have remained the National Railroad Passenger Corporation. It was founded in 1971. Also, it isn’t a government agency. But this company remains heavily subsidized and consistently fails to make a profit. In any event, this below list was created by a train accident attorney (learn more), to help you learn more about the history of Amtrak collisions.

Amtrak does receive government funding. Allegedly this allows it to compete with other modes of travel like the airline industry and auto industry. Amtrak as a passenger train carrier has a safety record showing serious accidents. Many have resulted in deaths of both passengers and crew members.

The Amtrak accidents that have taken place during the past ten years include:

March 17, 1993: An Amtrak train in Fort Lauderdale, Florida collided with a truck at a railway crossing resulting in six deaths and injuring dozens.

September 22, 1993: This is a date of one of the most deadly Amtrak accidents. In fact, this killed 47 people after a tugboat struck a bridge near Mobil Alabama. So this, in turn, caused the bridge to collapse when the Amtrak train was passing over it. The only Amtrak accidents that could compare with this crash happened in Essex, Maryland in January 1987. That case involved a train colliding with the rear of three Conrail locomotives. In that case, it killed 16 people.

May 16, 1994: An Amtrak train en route from Florida to New York struck a truck and derailed near Smithfield, North Carolina. In that case, it killed the engineer and wounded over 350 people.

June 8, 1995: This accident resulted in the deaths of seven family members. All this happened when the Amtrak train struck their pickup at a rural crossing near Nyssa, in eastern Oregon. The bridge had no stop signs.

October 9, 1995: An Amtrak train was involved in an accident in the desert in Arizona, southwest of Phoenix as a result of sabotage. The train was en route from Los Angeles to Florida. As a matter of fact, one crew member was killed and 78 people injured.

February 16, 1996: The Amtrak train accident occurred when the train hit head-on with a commuter train in Silver Spring, Maryland. This accident killed 11 people and injured 26.

June 18, 1998: In Portage Indiana, a commuter passenger train was bound for Chicago. But it struck a tractor-trailer that carrying large steel coils. In that case, the collision caused one of the steel coils to fly into one of the cars. This resulted in the death of three passengers and four others injured.

March 15, 1999: Here, an Amtrak train struck a truck. And this caused the train to derail near Bourbonnais, Illinois. Here, eleven died and over 100 people hurt.

September 20, 1999: An Amtrak train rear-ended a freight train in a rail yard in Cumberland, Maryland. Also, this resulted in 37 injuries.

March 15, 2000: This accident happened when an Amtrak train derailed by a cornfield, injuring 29 passengers in Carbondale, Kansas.

February 5, 2001: The Amtrak train and a freight train collided on the same track in Syracuse, New York, resulting in the injuries of 61 on board the train.

March 17, 2001: The Amtrak train was traveling from Chicago to California when it derailed in rural southwest Iowa. This accident took one life and injured approximately 90 others on the train.

April 18, 2002: This accident happened in Crescent City, Florida. In that case, an Amtrak Auto Train derailed. So it ended up killing four people and injuring over 150.

April 23, 2002: A freight and Metrolink commuter train crashed head-on during morning rush hour. And this took place in Placentia, California. In fact, it resulted in the deaths of two people and injured as many as 260 people.

July 29, 2002: An Amtrak train derailed near Washington, wounding 101 passengers, out of the 200 passengers aboard the train.

May 6, 2003: An Amtrak train collided with a lumber truck in southwest Georgia. In that case, it killed the engineer and the truck driver.

Conclusion.

Even a minor train accident can cause serious injuries or death. Also, the more severe ones can have even more losses. Some critics claim Amtrak is not putting enough funding into safety standards.

Analysts believe the Federal Government is not doing all that it can either. They say the authorities should ensure that the railroad industry enhances its safety programs. Analysts agree that railways have security problems. And these are serious. So addressing these before more deaths and injuries happen is important.

Survivors of train accidents can get money. So get a free consultation from our train accident attorneys. To learn more, speak to an Amtrak accidents lawyer now at (213) 596-9642.